"I tell him I tried. I tried to keep memory alive; I tried to fight those who would forget. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. There is so much injustice & suffering crying out for our attention. We must take sides. We must interfere. -E.W.

Coming Soon: Newsletter and Podcasting

I’m hoping to make some exciting additions to the website. Over the past week I was working — hard! — behind-the-scences to ready the site. I doubt you even noticed me tinkering around with the website. Well, at least I hope you didn’t. I did hit a major snag on Tuesday morning and brought the whole damned site down for 30 minutes or so.

First on the list of improvements was putting together the functionality to make a periodic newsletter. The mechanism is now in place and I’ll get to work on creating one. My challenge is getting it out to everyone. The readership is so enormous that my email system simply cannot handle the volume. I’ll either have to send it out, in batches, over weeks or pay for a service to distribute it for me.

The idea is to deliver this to the reader’s email inbox every so often. Additionally, I’ll have it up on the website. It will include a recap of what’s been going on, upcoming news, and other interest things like updates on the criminals (Austin Vantrease and Jonathan May of Newark, DE). Is there anything else you’d like to see?

I’d like to do this monthly, but perhaps a more realistic goal is quarterly.

[via mcpierce.blogspot.com]

Second, I am going to start podcasting from time-to-time. For the technically deficient, a podcast is nothing more than a digital audio file (or video file) or recording that can be downloaded from a the website to a media player (e.g., iPod, Computer, smartphone, tablet, etc.) or listened to by streaming online. Think of it as akin to online radio.

To me, it just gives another way to get Ryan’s story out. I envision doing this with some of the more popular post, but also (maybe) even every post. Who knows, people might listen to it on their commute or a trip?

Comments

For wordpress you can use a plugin called Wysija Newsletters. It sends out updates to subscribers with new content, like now, each time you post a new article I get a message, that is how I know you have posted something. Then you can set it up to send newsletters you write every month, quarterly, weekly…. If you are hosted on WordPress.org I don’t know if you can add that plugin or not but you could use a hatchling service at http://hostgator.com. They are easy to work with and with the plugin they send the messages out in batches.

Excellent idea. I just bought an iPad so I’ll enjoy learning how to download digital and video files. I think the newsletter will be a bonus and look forward to the first release. Hope Ryan is resting comfortably and able to enjoy some quality time outside with the nice weather we’re having.